""Tredrea is a great player - the coaches nominated him as the best player in Australia last year so that is what we think of him. But we will go with Bradley and back him in to do the job. Other than that we will hope he contracts a virus tonight.""
Essendon will take on a Port Adelaide side well short of full strength tomorrow night. Shaun and Peter Burgoyne are both out of the side Michael Wilson and Steven Salopek will also miss while there remains speculation that Roger James and Adam Kingsley could still miss.
""I would rather play them with some of the players they have got out of the side -there is no doubt about that. We know how hard it can be missing key players. we basically had no rucks for the first five rounds of the season,' Sheedy said.
""Sydney tackled very well last weekend and that is the sort of pressure we are going to have to put on as well. We played pretty well against Sydney and to be honest we probably should have won. There is a real opportunity for the side that wins tomorrow night to put their hand up and say they want to play finals' football.""
Sheedy said Essendon's senior players had got a real lift from the form of some younger players in recent weeks - namely Andrew Lovett, Jason Laycock and Kepler Bradley.
""Lovett has excited Essendon fans and his teammates as well - that is fair to say. But they have to make sure they are consistent from here on in. I think David Hille was really important for us last week. He gave us a much better structure.""
Essendon trained for 30 minutes at AAMI Stadium working on moving the ball quickly. They also did some goal kicking at each end of the ground.
